Berbers, Tuareg, or Imazighen?
Western vs Indigenous Labels And Definitions For Berbers
Oct 22, 2006
The North African Tuareg population (including diaspora) is estimated at around three million. They are often counted as Arabs, but this is erroneous. Apart from their distinctly indigenous relationships with land, language, culture, place, family and the supernatural world, they can be most obviously distinguished by the fact that men are veiled and women are not - the opposite of Arab custom. Women have much more freedom and power than in Arab society, as Tuareg genealogy is matrilineal, placing more importance on the female's role in family.
The Tuareg survive on wild plants and game, combined with herd animal produce and oasis gardening. They also manage camel caravans along ancient trade routes which sustain their barter-based economy. Many have been tempted away from traditional lifestyles however, and suffer from the same deprivations of disease and abuse that afflict urbanised indigenous peoples the world over.
The Tuareg identify as a number of different indigenous groups, such as Imouhar, and are part of what westerners call the Berber community. However, the Tuareg know this community as Imazighen. They have preserved their traditional language, Tamasheq, and also continue to use their traditional script, Tifinagh, to produce Tuareg literature and documents. Their customary lands lie in the north of Africa, and extend south into Nigeria, into lands they once colonised.
Like the Israelis, Zulu and Maori, the Tuareg are one of those unusual groups who can be classified as both colonists and aborigines simultaneously. Their expansionism encompassed the territories of the Songhay, Hausa and Harratine peoples. Such native invasion is a complex issue in debate and thinking around aboriginal rights, especially in circles where non-indigenousness and indigenousness are defined in terms of "predator and prey".
People may stray from indigenousness to colonialism, it is true, but that does not necessarily mean that they can never reclaim their aboriginality. In my view, indigenous peoples such as the Maori and the Tuareg, who have experimented with invasion and expansion, generally settle down again after a time and redevelop sustainable indigenous communities based on an intimate understanding of land and place, rather than continuing to build unsustainable empires based on ignorance and land abuse. My hope is that in time, western nations will also recover their indigeneity and redevelop this connection with land, place and culture.
Such is my rationale for classifying the Tuareg as indigenous people. But it's not up to myself or others to define them - that is for their own community to do. (And yes, I acknowledge that in writing this article, I am guilty of the same outsider interference I claim to oppose.)
